Happy New Year! If you are like many photographers, one of your New Year’s resolutions is likely to be to get your image files organized. So, for this next series of posts that is what I am going to write about.
The fancy buzzword for this process is digital asset management or DAM. If you have tons of digital files and want to really set up a very detailed system, I highly recommend a book called The DAM Book.
For most of you though, you just want to be able to find the image that you want quickly and easily, with a minimum of effort. The good news is that with digital files, this is very easy to accomplish. The bad news is it takes some discipline and some effort to set up your system on the front end.
Image File Organization Step #1: Import & Back up Your Images
The first step on this journey to total organization is importing the images from your card onto your computer or hard drive (and backup hard drive). For this, I use a program called Downloader Pro. It is made by Breeze Systems, and I love it.
Once I insert a card into my reader, Downloader Pro opens up and asks me if I want to do what I always do when I insert a card into the reader. To which I reply yes and it does the following: in my master image file on my external hard drive, it makes a new sub-folder with the date that any images were created (if there were three days’ worth of shooting on the card, it would make three files with three different dates).,
Then it puts all the images made on each date into the appropriate file. It also adds all of my copyright and contact information to the metadata of each image file. Lastly, it does the same thing on my backup hard drive.
So now I have two exact copies of all the images on two separate hard drives.
Image Back Ups
You do back up all your image files, don’t you?
If you don’t back up your files, you’re just rolling the dice. Sorry, but it’s true, storage is cheap, your images are irreplaceable, so you should back up. If your files aren’t backed up, stop reading right now and go buy a second hard drive.
I even have a third hard drive that I update with any new work once a month. I keep this third drive in a separate location.
Image File Organization Step #2: Editing
The next step is editing and rating. You should do both, ruthlessly!
I do this in Adobe Bridge and will soon be switching over to Lightroom. Everyone should edit; the longer you shoot, the more ruthless you become. But my rule is if I would not send it to my agent, and I would never submit it to an editor myself for something I don’t want it and I trash it.
In short, if I don’t see myself or anyone else using an image for something, I don’t keep it.
I don’t keep duplicates of digital files because there is no reason;, I have backups of everything and I can make as many exact copies as I need. If I make twenty images of a bird sitting on a branch, I would keep the best one as well as a couple of other head positions and lose the rest.
I edit and rate images on the same pass.
Image File Organization Step #3: Rate Your Images
I use a five-star system of rating images. I pull up a day’s shoot in Bridge (soon to be Lightroom) with thumbnails running down one side of the screen and a large preview of the selected image filling most of the screen.
Then I go through one image at a time and evaluate each for aesthetic and technical merit, and rate each image as follows.
- Five-star images are something really special, a family jewel kind of image. I don’t have many of those, probably one or two per cent of my files.
- Four-star images are again something special, maybe a unique behavior or really special light, definitely an above-average image; these make up maybe 5 to 8 per cent of my files.
- Three-star images are really the bread and butter of my files. These are images that are technically well done and of a good subject in a good situation. Making up over 90% of my files, I would not hesitate to send these off to an editor or my agent, for any purpose.
- Lastly, I have some two-star images. These are images that I really probably should not keep and will never use or send out, but for some reason, I just can’t let go of. Maybe they are near misses of something I have put a lot of effort into or special moments that I want to have a memento of; these are less than two per cent of my files.
- Any images that don’t get a star rating are deleted.
The beauty of having all my images rated like this is that if I am working on a slide program, calendar submission or other project and I just want to see the best of my files. I can just pull up all the four and five star images and see only the cream of my files.
Image File Organization Step #4: Rename Your Images
After I have edited and rated the images, it is time to rename and color correct.
I shoot Nikon, so my camera names each file with DSC and a 4 digit number, i.e., DSC_1234. Which for many people, would work fine, but if you shoot much, eventually you are going to hit DSC_9999 and roll over back to DSC_0001, then you are going to have different images with the same file number. A big problem!
So once I have everything edited and rated I use the batch rename function to rename each of the images. My file name system is “my name_date file was made year/month/day_4 digit number from original DSC filename” or Gettle_120113_1234.tif.
This is very easy to set up using batch rename and happens with just the click of the mouse. Now, since I have added the date to the file name, I will never have two files with the same name. Unless I shoot 10,000 images in one day, my record is 3,700 images in ten hours so I think I’m safe. Man, that was a good day!
Image File Organization Step #5: Color Correct
Next up color correction.
I shoot raw, so it is necessary that I color correct all of my images in order to get accurate colors. It is imperative that you do your color correction on a monitor that is calibrated to display accurate colors within industry standards. This ensures that anyone viewing your image, which is also on a calibrated monitor will see your images exactly as you intended them to be seen.
I do all of my color correction in Adobe Camera Raw. This is also when I will do any dust spotting that might be required. My goal is to do this once and to never have to touch the image again for color correction.
Once the images are color corrected, I save them as DNGs, which is Adobe’s version of a raw file. I can very easily convert these to JPEGs or tiffs as needed for different purposes.
As I save these color corrected images, I have Adobe Camera Raw add an S. to the existing filename, i.e., S.Gettle_120113_1234.dng. This way, I know if there is an S in the file name I know it has been color corrected. I save my image files as DNGs because it is an open file format, not proprietary like all the different camera’s versions of raw. My concern is that in 25 years, I will still be able to open a Nikon D300 raw file. Very likely yes, but you can never be sure.
Next week I will talk about the key to the organization of the whole system, cataloging and keywording.
Good Luck & Good Light!
Steve & Nicole